You would think that the AP would be satisfied with its status as "last remaining source of non-local 'news' for 95% of American newspapers." But no! Now they want to be kings of the internet, and whatnot, as well.

AP senior managing editor Michael Oreskes just sent out an internal memo to the troops telling them that hey, sure, all that "reporting" is fine and good, but it's time to get ahead of the ever-hastening news cycle. Key quotes:

Let's start with something that's obvious but worth laying out plainly: That "next cycle" we speak of so often in The Associated Press is now. Not 12 hours from the first breaking news, not even six hours, but one, maybe two hours from it - and maybe even faster than that.

This is hardly something that we're just waking up to. But it is accelerating by the week. As we look around the media landscape in recent months, over and over we're seeing the same thing. AP wins when news breaks, but after an hour or two we're often replaced by a piece of content from someone else who has executed something more thoughtful or more innovative. Often it's someone who has taken what we do (sometimes our reporting itself) and pushed it to the next level of content: journalism that's more analytical, maybe a fresh and immediate entry point, a move away from text, a multimedia mashup or a different story form that speaks more directly to users.

All AP reporters should now write a story, publish it, and then immediately write a scathing takedown of that story on an AP blog!